I have been wanting to refresh the site for sometime now. Last major overhaul was in October 2008 – some timing, uh? – when I migrated the site from Typepad to WordPress and my own domain.

It has been over 4 years, and the dark tabbed design was tired. That, plus lots of site bugs led me to a full redesign.

I hired Tim Grahl of Outthink Group to do the revamp of the site. To give you an idea of what how some of his other work, see the blogs of Dan Ariely or Daniel Pink. Outthink did the programming for all of the content in the main panel and sidebar.

Format: We shifted to a new format — 10 posts per page, with only the 1st post already opened. There is a lot of functionality going on that might not be visible, but the site does lots more good things now. It should also be way more stable.

We also eliminated hiding anything behind the front page in that old web 2.0 tab layout. Now everything is on the main page — but I wanted to keep the concept of the Tabs, without having them imprisoned in the header. So now every post has next to it one of 5 tabs that correspond to the old structure.

Illustration: Since the site covers economics, behavioral finance, investing and technology, I wanted to somehow convey the concept of simplifying complex ideas – making them easily understandable. I wanted to find an illustration that communicates this concept of creating order out of chaos – but is also a little light and fun.

One of the graphic designers I really like is Jim Flora, who did lots of Jazz album covers in the 1950s as well as commercial illustrations in the 1960s. I own an original Flora work called “Money Flow” that he did for the December 1964 issue of Fortune.

I liked that work as a concept for the blog.

If I could ask Jim Flora (who died in 1998), to design something, I would ask him to put some of the people, machinery and gears of finance from that Money Flow illustration as my header, then put that “flow” of economic activity (goods and services and money) running down the sides of the blog content (which runs about 3-4 screens long).

A designer friend of mine suggested I contact Tjasa, an illustrator to do the background. I asked her if she could update Flora’s Money Flow for the blog. What you will be seeing around you shortly is that work.

Please use the comments to demonstrate your own ignorance, unfamiliarity with empirical data and lack of respect for scientific knowledge. Be sure to create straw men and argue against things I have neither said nor implied. If you could repeat previously discredited memes or steer the conversation into irrelevant, off topic discussions, it would be appreciated. Lastly, kindly forgo all civility in your discourse . . . you are, after all, anonymous.

84 Responses to “A Little Background About the Site Redesign”

Overall, much better, but the typography could use some work. The header has asymmetrical borders around the big picture logo and the typeface sucks, both very offputting for the main image of your brand. I would recommend you have your designers fix that and pick a better less neo-old media trendy typeface. The background, while outstanding, is a little distracting. I would recommend screening it back a little so it doesn’t draw our eyes away from the main content of the page. Maybe gradient fades on either side over the graphic to blend it more to the middle content would be less jarring. I really like the concept of categories in lieu of tabs, works much better functionally, and hopefully the search will work correctly again.

also, ad more whitespace margin between the hard main container edge and the content, please. The current small margins hurt the eyes and hinder readability when combined with the distracting (but awesome as I said) outer graphic.

also after reading for an hour, my eyes are squinty. Bump up the content text a point, increase the leading a touch, and maybe change it up to a humanist font. The small book/serif font conflicts with the overall feel of the site and the other content in the div bar to the right and the headlines. IMHO, of course.

Nice redesign but i feel the background is a bit too gaudy and distracting. It distracts and takes attention away from the main content page. I’ve found these kinds of busy designs looks good at the short term but gets tired after a while.

Maybe find a way to tone it down a bit?

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BR: I am still playing with the colors and tones — we’ll probably roll out a variation — maybe even make it user defined — in the near future.

I do like the new layout regarding the posts and main content. Also the twitter feed which seems in style right now. And the personal news feed is very nice, though a little too low on the page; maybe you could put it on the other side. Plenty of room with those wide illustrations on each side. Hate to be negative but I find the illustrations down the side borders way too distracting, feeling my eyes constantly drawn to the sides instead of the content in the middle.

would prefer to “unroll” the post rather than go to another screen to see the whole post. Click “more” and see the rest. . Same for the next page, see how boing boing handles the next page. I like that approach.

Still love the site. Yes, I am old fashioned, am using a browser on a desktop

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BR: FT Alphaville does that exact same thing, but they have massive bandwidth.

Part of the idea of the design was to load faster than the old one — this is much quicker — especially if we move to a new host.

I leave town for 48 hours, come back, log on to make the rounds… I haven’t just missed two days of blog posts, but rather come back to the debut of the site redesign… Talk about feeling as though I’ve been gone for two months!

Huh? Okay – I can’t say I hate it (except for the bugs – did anyone test this site? – Geesh…on the homepage the sidebar content is on the bottom of the page rather than in the sidebar. That one is huge and glaring. There are others as well, but I charge for testing.) On the other hand (and maybe this is because I’ve worked with numerous CMS sites and live in the Pacific NW) for a WordPress site – I’d say this is on the simple and somewhat amateurish side. It is more formulaic than it needs to be – notice all Tim’s sites look basically the same. There is a lot more one can do with a WordPress site to make it more unique and better design-wise. But in the end if you are happy with it, and the navigation works – that is all that matters. The content will keep people coming to visit.

I think the background distracts from the content – too busy. Best way to give the message that you are trying to make order out of chaos is to go minimilsit. Think google. Simple, clean and to the point. Love your content though!

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BR: “Command +” (or “⌘ +”) makes the content bigger and shrinks the side illustrations — full on minimalist design!

Dump the heading. Green is not a good color (many other colors can also be irritating). Get the trademark “b” modernized somehow (e.g. don’t fence it in). Graphics in the heading are a distraction but not a good one. We are here for your wisdom not to be visually stimulated (bad or good). Simplify, simplify, simplify. The “b” logo is a must have on the site. As far as functionality I’m sure it will come together nicely as users submit suggestions.

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BR: I dont love that green either — My illustrator was off line for a while — when she gets back, I am going to try out a handful of different color combos

Nice upgrade. I assume it’s a work in progress, so if I may: Any chance of moving your excellent newsfeed up toward the top so it’s handier? Perhaps if you shrink the background and some of the stuff already up there maybe there’d be some room for it on the left?

I love the site Barry so I hate to say it but I’m not digging the new look. I find it harder to read and something about the look doesn’t quite gel with the Big Picture. Maybe it’s just a few of us and we’ll adapt in time.

I like the new design and think it was a great idea to get rid of the tabs. But what happened to the list of “recent comments”? If you followed or participated in a specific debate you did not have to open it to look for new contributions. If anything that “user tool” deserved to be expanded to more than the 5 most recent.

I agree that while the background is cool, it’s too busy for everyday reading.

It’s fine having everything on the front page but I’d still like category tabs in the header or on the side. Sometimes I just want to quickly jump to all the weekend articles. (I realize I can click on the weekend tab from a particular article to go to that category……but sometimes might have to dig a couple pages deep to find that first article).

Changing web design is fun but the best thing about this site has always been the content, regardless of format. Thanks for that.

I like the look Barry – forgot you were lauching a redesign. I’m out of town reading it just now and I think it’s a nice upgrade. Not savvy enough (as some of the posters are) to suggest any creative enhancements…

I love the fresh new look. The airiness of the design is a great improvement. Taking the colours off the illustration help keep a small sense of fun in the serious posts, which can’t be a bad thing. Well done. :-D

Since comments are open, I thought I’d offer a couple of my reactions to the site, other than the above. You’ve already said that changes to details remain to be made, so I’ll let those changes be made.

I do feel that the pervasive font pollution of the new design will likely be sorted out, over time. I very much like the font of the list on the Sunday morning reads, however, because it is consistent with that feeling of openness you have achieved with the redesign. Mixing serif and sans-serif can be jarring if not carefully planned, and the current mix is jarring to me. :-/

One thing I would ask is that you enable a ‘visited link’ style or colour for all the links visitors have been to. To me, the lack of visited link differentiation is one of the most irritating thing about the new generation of web sites.

Oh, just another thought: could your illustrator create icons for the Twitter, FB, G+, etc. sharing buttons at the top of each post? I suspect that would help the sense of ‘completeness’ that the design presents.

In Windows you can use ctrl+ or minus to widen the middle, but it enlarges the font also. Don’t know if it’s diff. on the Mac, but the world is still overwhelmingly Windows. I find the default font fine, though I am using a 17 inch laptop and that may affect my perception of it.

I did want to report that I checked the site on whatever version of IE my cheapie Lumia 710 is running and it works very well: you get only the main content with the sidebars almost eliminated. Very nice. I knew you kept Windows Phone 7.8 in mind during the redesign :)

One more thing – addressed by others as well: The body background graphic makes it almost painful to read the content. My eyes (and I suspect most people’s) are drawn out to the “noise” of the graphic. I love the graphic in its own right, but it just isn’t so good on this site. Perhaps muting the colors would help. If you read about web-design, you’ll find loud, busy graphics for a body background on a site where text is paramount are discouraged. (e.g. “It’s hard to read text on busy backgrounds.” ” And don’t make the background more interesting than the page content.” “Loud backgrounds with lots of patterns and colors can be distracting.”)

I will still faithfully return, but I will not be using Ctrl + as that makes the text way too large. I am most likely to just copy and paste the text into a document, format it to my liking, and read it that way.

The web design is a great. Fresh and retro at the same time. Strangely reminiscent of the credits at the end of an animated movie. I almost expect something to happen along the edges while I am reading.

Your personal picture is good. It is like that moment when Clark Kent takes off his glasses and says, “This looks like a job for…”

I really like the new design. The enhanced use of white space makes this new look much cleaner and easier to read. There is a navigation feature I miss and wish you would consider adding back.

In the old design, as is the case now, when I selected a title from the main page it opened the whole story in its own frame. However when the new frame loaded there were links to other posts that immediately preceded and followed the post displayed in the active window. This allowed me to move through all the posts on your site without having to go back to the main page. I don’t see a way to do that now and will really miss that ability.

I can only speak for my experience with your site but typically I read everything on your site daily. To do this efficiently I would open the first post on the main page and then use the links to move forward and backward in your site to read each item. A second benefit of navigating this way was that sometimes great posts were not readily viewable from the main page that would be viewable by navigating chronologically from the links. I’m wondering if that will be the case with this new design and that without those navigation links I will miss some really great posts as was the case before?

Just some food for thought! Again I still absolutely love the site and consider it part of my daily “required reading.”

GAWD! BR, how did you ever come to this? Color me skeptical, but apparently ‘Uber-schmaltz” has over driven the content.

A return to the narrative is in order, but the intended audience may be of a different era than this reader. Good luck with it though. I’ll have to show it to my grand-kids;maybe they’ll be able to offer some translation.

“holy cow”* – came out when I got to the IE8 laptop – reading the posts on the aPad “whats the big deal” even switched over from medium zoom entry to far .. yes the experience is way different in here
(-: in far mode aPad – the drain trap under TBP logo shows but the arrow flows are then backwards :-\

my aPad showed the car photos – then there is the fact the aPad is on wifi & not cell mode .. so many varibles .. are you on the FCC fine’g for unregulated audio volume to spec (-;

I miss the navigation click forward and backwards arrows at the top of the opened thread (tho I always wanted them also at the bottom of the thread) (beyond that wish – where the thread clicks into > top of next or bottom of next – ummm in a magical unicorn world – bottom to bottom / top to top)

without those, I guess return to top page main and rescan or backbutton browser or hit a tab button

The scripts make the site hopelessly slow on 1st gen iPads. The content loaded fast, and then the whole thing hung for a half dozen seconds while collecting social networking counts and formatting ads and stuff.

(The previous site was not much better, btw… Until the day someone decided to “improve” things by adding an iOS theme, and it became hopelessly crippled — I completely stopped reading the site then. Maybe look into improving the user experience in the site design’s next iteration? If so, get an old iPad, to get a good proxy of what a slow tablet feels like.)

Having co-chaired a website overhaul last year, I *know* just how much time, thought and effort went into your new site design. Looks sharp and definitely loads faster on my 5 year-old laptop!

Two comments:

1) I really like the new graphics (would make for a cool silk tie!) especially how the background becomes a plain, solid color as you scroll down the page. Your designer can play with making the background more opaque if readers find it too distracting.

2) In ‘Print’ mode, the page header gobbles about 1/3rd of the top of the page. Not sure why, but it’s a very common issue with Word Press sites. However, you addressed this with the “Print This Post” button located underneath the post header.

Can’t put my finger on any one thing but in general I like the old site better. Color, text size, busyness, the fact that the new summaries are too short to actually be summaries and require that I click on each post to determine if it’s worthwhile to spend more time.

Sorry, no, no, and no. The old site worked quite well for me. I liked it. I hit it every day, more than once. The new design — how can I put it–repels me. The redesign bogs me down, slows. Not all of us have the fastest DSL available.

The old site gave me the story much of the time without additional clickthroughs. The new design with a teaser paragraph doesn’t give me enough info, so I’m probably missing a lot by not hitting the “read more” link.

I really liked the way you presented your daily reads, very simply easy to follow, right there in your face–no “read more”–which is just a (sorry) cheesy way to get the reader to load another page. More unpleasantness–the redesign appears to extend to the archives.

Clearly I’m in the minority, but for me this redesign improves nothing. The content is still great….when I get to it. But I’m not so eager to get here anymore.

I agree with Dapple and Changja; the background and side illustrations distract and are too busy and not essential. I hope I don’t have to use the Ctl + key every time I come to this site to reduce illustrations. I prefer clean and simple web sites because the content is the crown jewel of this site.

I love everything about the site… except… before when I would click on the latest post from Calculated Risk’s blogroll, I could click on previous post to toggle through all the previous posts. I can accept having to go through the new and improved shortened post format, but… but… it would be so much easier if I could toggle between previous and next post, as so many have sucked me in. Other than that, a great overhaul.

The graphics on top and sides are groovy. Other than that, I’m not pleased.

-The main body of text is too narrow- I would appreciate more characters per line. [BR: Its the same size as before]

-The font is either too small (my post) or way too big (your post about the ‘fix” being in for gold and silver). In the latter you provide an extensive quote (i.e. article reprint) at a font size, perhaps double your standard size. There should be better ways to distinguish your content from someone else’s. [BR: User definable — hit Control +]

-Really, really dislike having to click “more” in order to read the entire post. Why can’t full post (unless it is gargantuan) be posted? With proper graphic approach, showing a distinct separation between posts blog would still be very readable and navigable. You know, more like you did it, say, last week. [BR: Makes the page l;oad much faster]

-The pulldowns for categories and archives are nice, but do you really need the other categories thing, showing all the key words in different sizes (sorry, I don’t know the techy name for that)? [BR: Tag cloud]

-The social buttons under each blog post title are just clutter, IMO, but I know that getting rid of them is a battle I will never win. [BR: Agreed]

In conclusion, the redo is much more cumbersome than the old version. I do expect the content to remain excellent, though.

A quick first impression from me: overall a nice look, but the typography is a big problem. There are simply too many different fonts, size changes, and format variations. This page in particular shows what I’m talking about:

Especially on a blog like this with multiple authors, it’s critical that your styles for the various text elements (titles, headings, main text, lists, quotes, etc.) adhere to a clearly defined — and fairly restrained — rule set. Otherwise it’s very difficult to read.

I like the change to the new layout and hats off to the graphic designer on the background illustration. I read your comments above on the color pallete… I do think the vivid orange and yellows of the background fight a bit with the colors of the main frame… perhaps a bit of a toning down on the background saturation is worth considering: http://imgur.com/UPvJn5Y

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BR: Thanks for the kinds — I do want to play with the colors and saturation a bit, maybe even try a few new palette combos

Could you add the feature that when the “Read more” link is clicked that the current web page is expanded to reveal the rest of the post. This would make it much easier to read the website rather than being sent to a new web page and having to click “Back” to get back to the main web page all the time. An example of this is the FT Alphaville website. Thanks and I enjoy reading your site daily!

my request for back/forward – nix the aggravation – the browser “Back” button is working Aok – just took time to get the hang of the new way of surfing

tho pretty sure the old site sent my aPad (in wifi) to top-left (in medium zoom) with ability to slide into the right column .. I like that way better than the 2nd column sent to the bottom in a 1 column

Barry – I’ve been an avid reader for several years now. Love the content, but i’m sorry to say that i don’t like the redesign. It’s way too busy (anti-google), and the font is way off as well, at least on my Mac. You picture is nice, but it doesn’t need to persist for each and every article.

I was working on this same problem for a buddy of mine who develops websites on his Mac (I develop on a PC). It is apparently a font that looks great for the Mac, where the Windows version looks all screwy, with strange bolded characters.

It is easy to change , though, it just needs to have a different font defined in the CSS, one that is properly tested in a Windows environment, I think.

Seems like a good functional improvement overall and I like his background illustration and the little icons with each blog entry (Video, think tank, etc). I have to say though, his old logo was much better. He should have kept it and changed everything else. Oh well! You read it everyday though, has the structure change been for the positive?

New design looks good overall. Content is great. I do prefer how the posts fully loaded on the prior design (without needing to click through). I understand that this change was made to reduce download times, but it would be great if readers could select their preferred format.

I really dislike how much real-estate is reserved for twitter/google etc. buttons and the graphic saying which category the post belongs on the main page. I’d like to see more content and less widgetry. I doubt the site will lose content over-all, but I have to work more on each post to get to it. If I really like a post and want to share it, I will, no need to make sharing front and center, when I’ve only see a sentence or two of the actual post. I’m old fashioned and boring, I know.

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BR: Yah, its slowing the load time. I am going to pull that off of all posts except the first one.

I think the new site is a great creative idea. My only quibble is that it’s slightly distracting. The whole background except for the BP logo and the top menu could be faded by about 50% so that it was there, and clearly seen if you looked at it, but the point is it doesn’t beg to be looked at. Thanks for listening.

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About Barry Ritholtz

Ritholtz has been observing capital markets with a critical eye for 20 years. With a background in math & sciences and a law school degree, he is not your typical Wall St. persona. He left Law for Finance, working as a trader, researcher and strategist before graduating to asset managementRead More...

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